


left-handed kisses

by spaceOdementia



Category: Me Before You
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 04:04:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6358642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceOdementia/pseuds/spaceOdementia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hey Clark, are you living, yet?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	left-handed kisses

**Author's Note:**

> I finally read the book. This is my way of grieving before/if I read the sequel. Ugh. My soul.

4:07.

Louisa always wakes up at 4:07. It’s sometimes thirty-three seconds into the minute, sometimes sixteen seconds, sometimes twenty-one. It’s an inconsequential time, this 4:07 a.m. There’s no rhyme or reason for it. It’s one time out of a thousand or million or however many times of day there can be.

4:07.

It blinks at her from her bedside table, red and warningly, the table seated in her new bedroom, inside her new home of 1,051 square feet from each end. She could have afforded more, but even with a fat and juicy savings account, the idea of spending any more on a place to live for her and possibly a visiting family member seemed…excessive.

4:08, the clock murmurs silently.

It’s time to go to sleep, Clark, her mind commands, tinged with a Will-like voice, slipping around her like rain.

So she does, dreaming of his hands. His strong, useless, warm, lively hands.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s what happens when you love someone, perhaps. Really and truly love someone. Louisa didn’t think Will would be one to haunt, though. One to lurk around.

She’s at the annex once more, gazing out the window in his spot. He always manages to land himself in the same spot to look out into the rain or sunshine or snow. It’s snowing, today, but the wood burner makes the room desperately warm, the fingers of it dashing into the air and making its way onto her skin. It seeps inside of her, so deep that she doesn’t have to wear sweatpants or a long-sleeved shirt while she stands there, looking into the pristine white of the grounds. She wears shorts and a tank top in that little room, immersed with heat.

Hands find her hips, the blunt, square-tipped fingers teasing the skin exposed between the bottom of her tank and the waist of her shorts.

They are warm and strong and lively and capable. They are as they always were as they move along her lines. She wants to move her hands to rest atop them, to feel that energy of them run through her, like the heat of the room. But her hands don’t move. They can’t move. They remain at her sides no matter how much she wants them to engulf the square-tipped fingers with her own. She sees her reflection in the window, but she sees nothing else.

“Hey Clark,” Will says, his breath hitting her ear, his voice rumbling into her eardrum. She can feel his lips on her earlobe, can feel his jaw move against her cheek. “Are you living, yet?”

Louisa jolts. She jerks against her sheets. Her eyes dart to the clock, unsurprised at the 4:07. She stares at the ceiling. She waits for the dream to continue.

 

* * *

 

 

They kiss, sometimes. She sees his bare torso, tan and scarred and lovely, forever imbued with the sun from Mauritius, still smelling of his natural, expensive cedar-wood smell. She’d love to bottle it up, keep it for herself, spray it on her pillow, swim in it and never come back.

He kisses her like he’s eating her, and her hands run over the scars, gently mending the harsh pink to magical silvered stitches. When they come up for air, their foreheads are smashed together, their bodies as close as they can manage to be, souls somehow entwined like she’s only read in books. He’s panting, and he’s smiling, and he asks her, “Hey Clark, are you living, yet?”

Louisa stares into his eyes for a moment. She opens her mouth.

She jolts. She is engulfed by the darkness of her new home, sweating underneath her chilled, lonely bedsheets.

Her heart thumps, and she can’t define what is a dream and what is a nightmare any longer.

4:07, the clock screams.

Maybe this is the time of night when Will woke up, too. When his body would not allow him to have _enough._

 

* * *

 

 

They’re on the peak of Mt. Kilimanjaro. He’s standing, wearing all his fancy climbing gear. She’s wearing a minidress she stitched from her mum’s old curtains and her black and yellow striped tights.

It’s not cold. His gaze rivals the sun with its heat. The air is thin, but they breathe just fine. They have each other, and that’s really all they need.

“Hey, Lou,” he says, after they’ve stared at one another instead of the breathtaking landscape right beside them. He really is handsome, Louisa thinks. Not only his face, but his soul, too. She sees it now, a tangible thing, sparkling like a billion grains of sand, as impactful as a hurricane. It can change your life if you stand too close.

She looks at him, waiting expectantly for the—

_4:07—_

_Are you living, yet?_

But in fact, he says, “I love you. I never said it, because you didn’t deserve it from a person like me. But I love you.”

Louisa opens her mouth, trying valiantly to say anything at all.

Then she jolts, opening her eyes to a darkened room, to a ceiling, to walls that enclose her. Her eyes are foggy, and it takes her a moment to realize that there are tears on her face. They dart to the clock on her bedside table.

4:08.

“It’s time to wake up, Clark,” Will says, and her heart races at the sound. She glances to the wall opposite her bed, in the same area where she had sat when he was sick once, a long time ago. It’s so peculiar that it makes her light-headed, and the world spins as if struck by a meteor.

Her breath shudders, and she feels a deep heat inside of her core, like a fever.

She blinks, and he is no longer there. She wipes at the damp streaks on her face, blinking once more. And then she feels it, that pull behind her eyelids. That yawn in her stomach.

He’s gone.

She’s awake.

 


End file.
